Abstract
Heidegger argues that the overly reductionist approach of the natural sciences, since 1850, renders it blind to the essential character of nature. Instead of revealing nature to us, modern scientific thinking conceals nature behind the veil of its own interests, interests driven by the quest for technological mastery over nature and circumscribed by its mathematical method. This chapter reconstructs Heidegger’s general critique of modern math-based science by focusing on how the scientific thinking informs thinking in general, how it dictates the way objects appear, the character of causation and free will and the character of science now that it has come under the sway of technological thinking. While the chapter does not investigate Heidegger’s solutions to this problem, a brief discussion of Plato’s notion of wonder, as the basis of philosophical thinking, points us in the direction of a new, or perhaps old, way of thinking.
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Notes
- 1.
Trish Glazebrook, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science (Fordham University Press: New York, 2000), 4.
- 2.
Martin Heidegger, cited in Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010), 139.
- 3.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 139.
- 4.
Glazebrook, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science, 14.
- 5.
Iakes Ezkurdia et al., “Multiple evidence strands suggest that there may be as few as 19 000 human protein-coding genes,” Human Molecular Genetics, 2014 Nov 15; 23(22): 5866–5878, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4204768/
- 6.
Human Genome Project FAQ, November 12, 2018, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.genome.gov/11006943/human-genome-project-completion-frequently-asked-questions/
- 7.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 139.
- 8.
Martin Heidegger, cited by Gordon, Continental Divide, 142.
- 9.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 142.
- 10.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, cited by Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by Kenley Royce Dove, (Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco, 1970), 12, 42.
- 11.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 151.
- 12.
Hegel, cited by Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, 15.
- 13.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 143.
- 14.
Glazebrook, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science, 65.
- 15.
Ibid, 230. Although Heidegger concedes that Plato still generally conceives of nature as prior to the idea.
- 16.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1962), 115.
- 17.
Ibid, 141.
- 18.
Ibid, 125. Heidegger refers to the medieval scholastic philosophers, that is, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus.
- 19.
Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 3rd Edition, translated by Donald A. Cress, (Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1993), 13.
- 20.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 125.
- 21.
Ibid, 126.
- 22.
Ibid, 126.
- 23.
Ibid, 127.
- 24.
Ibid, 127.
- 25.
Ibid, 127.
- 26.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1965), 433.
- 27.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 139.
- 28.
Descartes, Meditations, 14.
- 29.
Ibid, 52–53.
- 30.
Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” translated by R. F C. Hull and Alan Crick, appearing in Existence and Being (Gateway Editions, LTD, South Bend, 1949), 296.
- 31.
Ibid, 296.
- 32.
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revision of Carus translation by Lewis White Beck (Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, Indianapolis, 1950), 37.
- 33.
Heidegger, cited by Gordon, Continental Divide, 139.
- 34.
Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, 40–41.
- 35.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis White Beck (Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1956), 100.
- 36.
Descartes, Meditations, 28.
- 37.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 101.
- 38.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 362.
- 39.
Ibid, 362.
- 40.
Ibid, 362.
- 41.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1998, p. A446/B474.
- 42.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 362.
- 43.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis White Beck (Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1956), 101.
- 44.
Gordon, Continental Divide, 362.
- 45.
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 306.
- 46.
Ibid, 308.
- 47.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 51.
- 48.
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 309.
- 49.
Ibid, 300.
- 50.
Ibid, 300.
- 51.
Ibid, 311.
- 52.
Ibid, 311–312.
- 53.
Plato, “Theaetetus,” in The Dialogues of Plato, Volume IV, translated by B. Jowett (Oxford University Press, Humphrey, 1924), 210.
- 54.
Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, 39.
- 55.
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 312.
- 56.
Ibid, 314–315.
- 57.
Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” edited by David Farrell Krell (Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1977), 307–308.
- 58.
Ibid, 299.
- 59.
Ibid, 299.
- 60.
Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990), 156.
- 61.
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 292.
- 62.
Ibid, 316.
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Simmons, J. (2020). Heidegger’s Critique of Rationalism and Modernity. In: Callahan, G., McIntyre, K.B. (eds) Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42599-9_8
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